And the Ashcorft Alliance also featured prominently in today's budget presentation. The second half of the BTL compensation payment is due in the two upcoming fiscal years. That's tens of millions of dollars and the PM discussed the difficulties with the payouts:..

Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow - Prime Minister "You know, his position is: well, there is a settlement agreement and we will go to the language and we will get the interpretation from the CCJ- and he is right, but Christ man. I sat across the table from this man, I'm not naïve, but I will tell you that when I was insisting that the only way I would settle is if there were an agreement that the accommodation agreement portion of the award would go to the people of this country for the funding of charitable projects. We argued and ultimately I said to them and they agreed, well he doesn't have any personal financial interest in these shares, these things are owned by charitable concerns and so yeah he can agree to do, subject only to his taking out expenses. What is happening know, is that, clearly, because, in my view, he has been checkmated, at least temporarily in terms of collecting on the arbitration awards, he is inflating, deliberately, those costs with respect to the Dunkeld expenses to try to get back at the government, well we are going to the mattresses. We will go to the CCJ, I don't think that the language in the agreement entitles him to say the liabilities are exactly what I claim them to be; no man. A court will clearly have to determine what is reasonable and what is not reasonable. In the end, if he does succeed in getting more in US dollars that I personally think he is entitled to it would be a violation certainly of the spirit in which the discussions were held, but if that is what the legal language sustains then I will have to accept that in that regard I would have invested."

The second installment amounts to approximately $180 million Belize dollars.

To settle on the true meaning of the language, and to determine how much is due in US and Belize dollars, government will have to go to the CCJ.